This Penguin Classic is performed by Roy McMillan, narrator of Underland by Robert MacFarlane, The Second Sleep by Robert Harris and Love Is Blind by William Boyd.
This definitive recording includes an introduction by Haydn Mason and is translated by Theo Cuffe.
Something between a tale and a polemic, these 'fables of reason' are feats of narrative compression and contain much of Voltaire's best and funniest writing. From ribald tales of adultery to conversations between cosmic travellers, the stories in this collection pose moral, philosophical and social questions. Listener and protagonist alike find their assumptions challenged as Voltaire mingles rationality and fantasy.